


And When I Dream

by Mireille



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-12-31
Updated: 2001-12-31
Packaged: 2018-08-16 05:04:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8088382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: There's more to Ron than just the loyal sidekick. Unfortunately.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written long before the publication of OOTP, and therefore not at all compliant with canon. It's a total AU anyway, even aside from that.

...clawing my way into wakefulness, choking back a cry of terror before the sound can wake my roommates. Pushing back the frayed sleeve of my pajamas to reveal-- to reveal--

Skin. Winter-pale and unblemished except for the normal scattering of freckles and the half-moon scar I got from falling off a broom when I was eight.

No Dark Mark.

Not yet.

I pull aside the curtains from around my bed, taking my nightly inventory of sounds, the least damning way I can make sure that he's sleeping safely in the bed next to mine. Nightmare whimpering from the bed next to the door...check. Half-audible babbling in what might be Gaelic and what might be gibberish from the next...check. Quiet, steady breathing from the third...check. And snoring that would wake the dead from the bed on my right hand side. Check. 

He's alive.

It was only a dream.

I haven't killed Harry.

It was the drowning dream again tonight, the one where I regain consciousness under the lake during the Triwizard Tournament. Still able to breathe thanks to whatever spell Dumbledore put on us, I hold him down until the gillyweed wears off, until he loses the struggle with instinct and *inhales*, great lungfuls of brackish green water. 

I hold him down until he's quite still, and then, feigning charmed sleep, I allow myself to float to the surface, there to wake and weep and mourn when they break the news to me--gently, so gently that they must think I'm likely to break. 

And then, when I'm alone, pushing back my sodden sleeve to see what I've been feeling since the moment Harry's struggles ceased--the Dark Mark, burning on my arm. And I laugh.

And I wake, shaking, guilty, sickened--and tempted. Sorely tempted.

Malfoy thinks he hates Harry, but it's a cold hate--it's ritualistic, rote, the sort of thing Death Eaters' children learn in the nursery. ("Eat your peas, dear, and stand up straight, and don't forget that you must hate Harry Potter.") There may even be a degree of hope in it--hope that he can win Harry over to the Dark, that he can make him see the error of his ways, that he can make Harry stop being The Boy Who Lived.

Me? I just want to make him stop. Being.

I want to stop following him around like a faithful spaniel. I want to be someone other than "Ron Weasley? Oh yeah, Potter's friend... " ( _the twins' kid brother, Ginny's big brother, but I can't hate them, they didn't *choose* me..._ ) I want to stop being compared to -- comparing myself to -- him: not as clever, not as brave, not as heroic, not as rich... So many things handed to him on a silver platter, and I want him to see there's an end to it.

Before there's an end to me. Ginny nearly died because of him. Diggory did die because of him. I've come -- not as close as Ginny, no, but closer than I'd have liked, because of him. And I'll do it again, put myself in danger because of him, and I won't be able to stop myself, because he'll expect it of me. And then I'll be dead, and no one will even know who I was.

If he'd never come to Hogwarts, I'd have been all right. There'd have been something to distinguish me from the horde of Weasleys, like Charlie's Quidditch talent or the twins' practical jokes. I'd have been good at something. I just don't know what it would have been. I lost that chance on the train that first September morning, leaving me stuck as "Harry Potter's friend." He took that chance from me. 

But he didn't take every chance from me. If I can't be good at anything--or at least, good enough to get me out from under his shadow--I can always be Bad. And "Ron Weasley? The one who killed Harry Potter?" It does have a ring to it. A nasty oily bitter ring, to be sure...but as Malfoy gleefully points out to me every chance he finds, a Weasley has to take what he can get.

I wonder, will the Dark Mark come before or after I kill him? In the dreams, it always appears on my arm just as Harry dies. Poetic, although probably inaccurate.

I've no doubt that it will come. What could prove my loyalty to You-Kn...to Lord Voldemort more thoroughly than the murder of his most hated enemy? I only hope Mum and Dad don't find out. That's the only bad part--it'll break their hearts to know I went bad. Maybe they won't ever know. Wormtail's mother thought he died a hero, after all. They'd be happier with me dead than with me alive and Dark, I think; maybe I can think of something.

Must remember to keep my distance from Harry today. Malfoy's been spreading some poisonous tripe that's made Harry a bit twitchy around me, hyper-aware of every time I so much as glance in his direction. As if Malfoy could even begin to understand what I want from Harry. 

As if I could understand it either. I know Malfoy's wrong about it -- that, at least, I'm clear about -- but what it is is far more complex than what it isn't. I dream about killing Harry, and they aren't nightmares. But if I hate him so -- and I do -- why do I persist in following him around? Why -- apart from the fact that he's a spoiled brat who richly deserves it -- do I try to bash Malfoy's face in whenever he starts in on Harry?

Because Harry's the bloody hero, that's why. Good and decent and kind and so damned wonderful it makes your teeth hurt, and he's been like a long-lost brother to me since that day on the train. At least when I'm around him. When I'm around him, it's like he reshapes me into what he thinks I ought to be -- the loyal sidekick, two steps behind and forever in the shadow. 

It's only at night that I discover how deep those shadows are Only in the privacy of my dreams can that part of me that's small and petty and vicious and angry have free rein. That's the only place that Harry can't keep the Dark from touching me. 

So he's not really in any danger from me. They're only dreams.

For now.


End file.
